He was standing alone near the bar, rather than in the middle of the showroom floor, and his jaw didn’t drop when he first caught sight of Jenna. But his striking pale blue eyes did widen, and that supple-looking mouth of his stretched into a slow, appreciative smile that still managed to send the message she’d been hoping for.
“This is not the look of a farmer’s daughter,” he said when Jenna reached the bar and he stepped up to meet her as if he’d been waiting for her.
“What are farmers’ daughters supposed to look like?” Jenna asked, raising her chin in challenge and suppressing a smile of her own.
“Not as good as you look,” he said, tilting his head to take in the full view now that he was nearer.
And while Jenna lectured herself about how it shouldn’t please her to have his reaction be what she’d hoped for, it still thrilled her to no end.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked then.
“It’s an open bar,” Jenna pointed out.
His smile turned into a mischievous half grin that told her he’d known that all along.
“I’ll have a glass of red wine,” she told the bartender, bypassing Ian.
“Make it two,” he added over his shoulder as he leaned an elbow on the bar and focused his attention solely on Jenna.
Despite that, just as the bartender poured their wine and slid the glasses to them, three old friends came up to say hello to Jenna and put in drink orders of their own.
As Jenna chatted with them, Ian stayed where he was. It seemed rude of her not to introduce him, so she did.
“Are you here together?” Neily Pratt—one of the three old friends—asked Jenna.
“No!” Jenna answered much too quickly.
Ian chuckled quietly, as if her discomfort at that question amused him.
“But you were talking when we came up, so we’ll leave you alone,” Neily added when the other three glasses of wine had been delivered.
“Would it be so bad if we were together?” Ian asked when the women had moved off. “Because Shannon isn’t here yet, and everybody else I know is busy. I was hoping you’d have pity on me and keep me company.”
“Out of pity?” she repeated, teasing him with the word.
“I’ll take what I can get,” he joked back, as if he were desperate.
Being in a large group and not knowing anyone was something Jenna was far more familiar with than she wished she was. Too many moves to too many cities as Ted attempted to find a medical specialty he could tolerate had required her getting too many new jobs, frequently putting her in that position. And each and every time it had happened she’d hated it so much that she did feel a little sorry for Ian, the fish out of water in this gathering of Northbridge townsfolk.
Or at least that was what she told herself when, rather than abandoning him, she said, “We should at least move, we’re right in the way of everyone getting drinks.”
Which was true enough as several more people gathered there.
“Come on, I’ll show you my favorite showcase,” Ian urged.
Curious about his taste, Jenna agreed. What she hadn’t expected was for him to take her elbow to guide her to the very back of the showroom portion of the remodeled barn. Or to have that hand at her elbow feel warm and strong and much, much better than it had any reason to feel.
In fact it felt so good that she lost track of everything around her and only regained her wits when she found herself in the display right next to the door to the work room.
Almost no one was venturing back that far, and it was a distance from the music as well, so it was fairly quiet. They were now in the business–office showcase that displayed bookcases and filing cabinets positioned around an enormous desk that was the centerpiece.
“You can help me guard this so no one comes back here and scratches it or puts a wet glass on it—I just bought it, so it’s mine.”
He gestured at the desk. The base was antiqued black, and the top was walnut with a subtle carving along the edges to soften the line.
“It’s a beautiful desk,” Jenna said, studying the piece of furniture as he turned to lean against it like a sentry.
“Handmade by Chase,” Ian informed her. “Not only did I like it, but I like the idea of having something he designed, crafted and carved himself.”
“That’s really nice,” Jenna said, meaning it. It moved her that he was trying to forge bonds between himself and his newly discovered family.
Then, without intending it, her gaze went from the desk to him.
He looked amazing in a pair of pin-striped gray wool slacks and a charcoal-colored mock-neck sweater that she had no doubt was cashmere. Too amazing—she was a little afraid of her own jaw dropping.
So she followed his lead, turned around and leaned on the desk much the way he was, making sure to keep a respectable distance between his hips and her own.
With both of them facing the mingling crowd of people beyond the showcase, Ian nodded his chin at them and said, “So do you know everybody?”
“Pretty much—I did grow up here.”
“Along with Chase, Logan and Hadley—they’ve told me stories that have said good and bad about that. How about you? Good? Bad? Both?”
“All good, actually. I loved it here. I loved living on the farm, I loved that everyone knew everyone else—it was all just one great big family to me,” Jenna said, taking a sip of her wine.
“Then why did you leave?” he asked, doing the same.
“I’d always planned to leave for a while, for college— the local college didn’t offer what I needed. But I’d also always planned to come back as soon as I could. This was such a great place to grow up, it was where I wanted to have and raise my own kids.”
“But you were away for how long?”
“Too long—ten years,” she said, unable to keep the disdain for that fact out of her voice.
“Was there something keeping you away that was out of your control?”
Jenna knew her tone had opened the door to that question. But there was a limit to what she was willing to tell this man, so she said, “Things just happen. We make choices—not always good ones—and sometimes the tide carries you farther and farther out to sea. It makes it tough to get back to shore.”
“Shore being Northbridge?”
“And my family….”
“Were you at odds with them?”
“No,” she said firmly. Because the truth was bad enough. She didn’t want him to think something worse had kept her away. “It was just … Because I let other things take precedence, it was hard to get home. So I didn’t make it back as often as I wanted to—barely once a year and sometimes even longer than that would go by before I could get back. If that hadn’t been the case …”
She took another sip of wine, because she needed some bolstering to talk about this.
“What?” Ian urged.
Jenna shrugged. “If I’d been able to visit more often, if I’d been able to move back two or three years ago the way I’d planned, I might have seen the indications of my mother’s heart problems and had them addressed before she ended up having the attack that killed her.”
“She didn’t tell you she was feeling bad?”
“My parents didn’t believe in burdening